2025 American Housing Survey (AHS)

This Information Collection Request includes the data collection instruments associated with the administration of the 2025 American Housing Survey. Increasing field costs and declining response rates have led HUD, starting in 2015, to adopt a continuous data collection model as opposed to the periodic 5-month data collection every other year. HUD believes continuous data collection will be more effective, primarily because: 1) it eliminates the expensive, time-consuming Regional Office AHS ramp-up costs every two years, and 2) it puts in place a more experienced AHS workforce with a constant workload. An added benefit is that we will be able to increase the frequency of national and metro AHS estimates, allowing for more current estimates and better comparability to other data sources which collect annual data (surveys such as the American Community Survey and key estimates such as homeownership/vacancy rates). The survey will continue to be longitudinal, interviewing the same housing unit every two years. The sample will be divided into 12 cohorts where each cohort has a 2-month data collection period. The 2025 data collection procedures and questionnaire content are similar to the 2023 survey with the following exceptions: * New data will be collected in the 2025 AHS core questionnaire with proposed questions about income (including non-relative income, real estate transactions, taxes and fees, home improvement, and recent movers). * Removal of Six Supplemental Modules from the 2023 AHS: The AHS design includes the inclusion of rotating supplemental topical modules to meet HUD’s needs for new topical content without increasing respondent burden. This approach was recommended by the National Research Council’s 2008 report Rebuilding the Research Capacity at HUD. With this approach, topical modules from the previous year of the AHS are removed and replaced with new content. For this reason, the Power Outage, Heat Risk, Healthy Homes, Housing Insecurity, Urbanization, and First-Generation Owners supplemental modules will not be included in the 2025 survey. * Reinstatement of Home Accessibility and Arts and Culture Supplemental Modules: The Arts and Culture module, last fielded in 2015, will be administered to half of the sample. The Home Accessibility module, last fielded in 2019, will be administered to the full sample. * Introduction of Three New Supplemental Modules: To continue the strategy of supplemental modules to minimize respondent burden and satisfy widening needs for data content, three new supplemental modules have been added to the survey – Climate Risk and Insurance, Accessory Dwelling Units, and Housing Costs Roster. These modules collect data on the prevalence of climate risks, adaption to climate risks, and insurance, the prevalence of accessory dwelling units, and contributions of household members to rent/mortgage and utilities payments. Please refer to Section 2 (Needs and Uses) for more information on these modules and to the attached items booklet for the specific questions in these modules and the rest of the AHS questionnaire. * Demographic Questions on Sexual Orientation: Sexual Orientation (SO) Self-Report Questions will be asked of all adult respondents. Test of Proxy Questions on Sexual Orientation: The respondent will be asked Sexual Orientation (SO) Proxy Questions for all adult household members in 2023 AHS sample to test item nonresponse.

The latest form for 2025 American Housing Survey (AHS) expires 2028-01-31 and can be found here.

Occupied Interviews

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Community and Social Services - Community and Regional Development